Get to source of gun violence

Published 6:30 pm, Monday, July 2, 2012

Here's what needs to be asked after every shooting in Bridgeport: Where did the gun come from?

That's what Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch said the other day at yet another community meeting in his city to address what the mayor calls the "disease" of gun violence, and he's absolutely right.

Within the overall context of gun violence in Connecticut's cities -- including Stamford, where guns are fired on the streets with regularity -- is the urgent issue of the pool of young men who are likely to be at one or the other end of the gun.

It is those young men who are at the center of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's recently announced "focused deterrence" plan, an effort to concentrate law enforcement and other state resources on the groups of young men in cities who are already known to the judicial system.

But moving into an even narrower niche is the question of where these young men obtain guns, and what can be done to clamp down on the supply and prosecute the person who provided the weapon.

In some cases, a person gets prosecuted for illegal possession of a weapon. In other cases, a person gets prosecuted for committing a crime, and if a gun was involved, the judge beefs up the sentence.

Authorities need to go the next step, which is to establish the history of the weapon. Where did it come from and how did it get into the hands of a criminal? The nation's patchwork of gun laws makes it very easy for guns initially sold legally to quickly make their way onto the black market - which grows dark as it travels from South to North. Mayors of northern cities, led in recent years by New York's Michael Bloomberg, decry the unceasing flow of deadly weapons onto the streets, as cops in our communities fight a losing battle to get rid of the guns.

Loopholes in gun laws, whether at the federal, state or local levels, have to be closed.

Efforts like this should not be affronts to law-abiding gun owners. But every illegal use of a gun should be an affront to all of us.